The Terezín Memorial. A city - a museum and a distinctive site of memory 1

This study analyses the history of the Terezin Memorial from its establishment in 1947 to the period shortly after the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989. The memorial was established on the site of the largest World War II concentration camp of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and is the second most important Jewish memorial in the Czech lands after the Jewish Museum in Prague (the term is used in the sense attributed to it by Pierre Nora). At the same time, the text focuses on building the collective memory through museum exhibits and exhibitions as much as through the memoirs of surviving inmates. This study demonstrates that the totalitarian regime abused its power to manipulate memory, yet also that the minority created a parallel collective memory. The Terezin minority thus came to symbolise Jewish courage and suffering.